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Hardland evokes the soft, pliable spirit of Gumby, Wallace & Gromit

When Gumby creator Art Clokey died in 2010, television lost a link to its stop-motion past. Mr. Clokey trained under modernist filmmaker Slavko Vorkapić and in 1953, he made a student film, “Gumbasia” —a nod to Disney's Fantasia — in which clay shapes dance to a jazz soundtrack. That rhythm became Gumby who dominated kid's TV in the late 60s and Clokey's legacy lives on from the Aardman animations of Wallace & Gromit to Robot Chicken (albeit the latter in a more tongue-in-cheek way).

But in games that process as a art-style was only expressed in dismal titles like 1993's Clayfighter for the SNES which I distinctly remember returning in a huff to my local Blockbuster. So it's with happiness that the new tech demo for Mountain Sheep's new adventure game Hardland carries on the gelatinous motion of Clokey's work.

In 2001, Clokey said," giving a toy is an act of love." Given that Hardland will take a toy-like sandbox approach to play, Mountain Sheep would have surely warmed his heart.

Jamin Warren founded videogame arts and culture company Kill Screen. Formerly a culture reporter for the Wall Street Journal, he's long been an advocate for game culture and serves as an advisor to MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design. Jamin also hosts Game/Show for PBS.